Abstract
Coding Mind-Body Dualism is an experiment, which relates stop motion animated painting to a virtual environment within a 3D mapped kinetic gallery installation. Exploring the role of the artist’s hand in creating a sense of human presence within code-based virtual art, the research and studio outcomes demonstrate the critical importance of intuition-led gestural painting as a means to instill a sense of human presence into the viewer experience of algorithmic art.
The body of work and associated research analyses the viewer experience of physical and virtual space, of paint, and of self. Through an exploration of proprioception and consciousness, Coding Mind-Body Dualism develops a contemporary assessment of the ‘mind-body problem’ as it relates to algorithmic art. Rene Descartes’ Cartesian Dualism theories are compared with Francis Crick’s and Francisco Varela’s research around neurophenomenology, to develop an understanding of a viewer experience of code-based immersive art.
By overlaying stop motion animated gestural painting onto medical scan data within an abstract virtual world of the mind, Coding Mind-Body Dualism evaluates the critical value of intuitive painting practices as they relate to algorithmic art. Referencing instructional project development methodologies aligned with Sol LeWitt, and situated within a current field of practice near to Rachel Rossin and Jon Rafman, Coding Mind-Body Dualism divines a connection between controlled formulaic planning and artistic instinct. Can a 3D mapped translation of animated real-world painting instill the hand of the artist into an algorithmic environment?
Coding Mind-Body Dualism is a painting experiment contributing to a dialogue around post digital-revolution art making, which in its development has highlighted an additional consideration of critical value. When a planned algorithmic process, designed for a formulaic outcome converges with intuition-led painting, a knowable result becomes no longer possible to predict. The compounded elements, regardless of control-driven processes, create an art experience which is unprescient.